Why Playing Hard to Get Works

I went through a terrible phase from the time I was eight and until I was about 25. (Admittedly, it was a long phase.) I was really into dudes who were not so into me.

It all started with Chad, my second grade boyfriend who decided that he hated me when we entered third grade. One day on the playground, he called me over to where he and his friends were hanging out and I bounded over, elated that he'd finally talked to me. When I got close to him, he and his cohorts kicked a pile of wet leaves at me. But, oh, how I still swooned.

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Much later, in grad school, I rebounded from my college boyfriend with a brooding fellow writer who repeatedly told me that he didn't want a relationship (usually when we were in bed together) and wasn't very good at returning texts. Naturally, I was obsessed with him. And miserable at the same time.

While this information may make me sound a bit stupid (and, looking back, I totally was) I just couldn't be attracted to guys who came on too strong. There were a few over those years who would call me, text me, and ask me out on actual dates, and they just creeped me out for the most part. I needed a bit of mystery.

Luckily, science now proves that those feelings were valid, at least in part. According to a series of four studies published in the European Journal of Personality, women (and men) are attracted to potential partners who play hard to get. What's more, employing this oft-advised dating strategy could actually help you attract a high-quality partner with maximum potential for long-term commitment.

The key here, which for most of my life I just wasn't too good at, is that both parties—as in, the guy and the girl—should be a bit coy when trying to attract a mate. According to researchers, women benefit from this strategy because it allows us to test guys out a bit. As far as men go, they should display "medium availability," which researchers define as being not too easy or too hard-to-get, to really catch our eye.

After all of those years, I think I finally learned how to do the hard-to-get thing the right way. My current relationship began after I played it cool for months with a dude I really dug. He pursued me casually, texting me to hang out, buying my drinks (and my friends' drinks) if we met up—but he never came on too strong or overtly tried to turn me into his girlfriend. Three and a half years later, we're engaged—thanks to science, it seems.